


Out of the Ordinary

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-06
Updated: 2006-06-06
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:35:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: College is good for Sam, in all the right ways and for all the wrong reasons. But returning home with Dean, as much as home is nothing but the passenger seat of an Impala somewhere in the lower 48, is just the opposite and means just as much.





	Out of the Ordinary

When Sam runs out and slams the door on the family and all that it stands for, Dean half wants to go and punch him so hard he doesn’t remember his own name and half wants to... he doesn’t know. The second option prevails, and instead of running after his brother, he stands useless and frozen in the far corner, staring as Dad first pounds his fist against the door and yells, “Good riddance!”, and then crumples suddenly to the ground, shaking with soundless sobs.

Sometimes, Dean is fed up with the both of them, wishes they could just stop their constant fighting. And that’s from someone whose life has been nothing but fighting almost as long as he can remember.

Full ride to Stanford. He knows what the words mean, _how much_ the words mean to Sammy, but all he can see in them just now is a door slammed hard enough to crack a pane of glass and Dad, crying on the floor — Dad, _crying_.

Then again, he knows the tears that glinted in Sam’s eyes weren’t just from anger, either.

\---

College is what Sam expected and it isn’t, it’s like the stories he’s read-heard-made up for himself and it isn’t. Maybe he was expecting some sort of great fanfare on his entry to the world of normalcy, some great party waiting once he breaks through the wall that’s kept him out of these people’s lives for so many years. Instead, it’s like jumping into a rushing river, everyone hurrying along with their own, their _normal_ lives, all around him, while he struggles to swim along and keep his head above the water.

In its own way, ordinary life is just as terrifying as demons and spirits.

The first night in his dorm, Sam’s roommate asks him incredulously why on Earth he’s emptying the salt shaker over the windowsill, and he blinks and doesn’t really have an answer.

“Whatever, dude,” says the kid. Turns away, mutters, “weirdo” under his breath. _That_ Sam is used enough to.

Normal people don’t salt up at night, then. It’s obvious, it should’ve occurred to him long ago. They don’t know the things Sam knows. Of course they don’t. Still, it makes him uneasy, leaving them unguarded like this.

See? Dean would say. You don’t fit in with them. You’ll never fit in.

Sam grits his teeth and sweeps the salt into the trash can.

\---

Dean keeps his phone with him at all times. After all, when Sam calls to say he’s realized how stupid he is, realized it’s time to come home, he’ll call Dean, not Dad. He’s always gotten along better with Dean, so it makes sense. Every day, the inevitable call draws nearer.

All he has to do is wait.

\---

Once he gets over his salt habit, things go all right for Sam. He does well in class, earns a geeky reputation among his peers. Even here, he’s the one his friends come to when Google can’t seem to yield them a thing — he can always dig up something useful, always.

A couple weeks before finals, a girl gets attacked near his dorm. During their inspection, the police take Sam in for having a concealed weapon on his person. 

It’s not like he’s never been in a holding cell, but this is particularly embarrassing, not least because the girl who got attacked turns out to be Jessica from his Psych class, and when she sees him, she exclaims, “Don’t be silly, this is Sam! He wouldn’t hurt a thing, not if you paid him, right, Sam?” 

Sam’s face burns, but he ducks his head and assents.

“He had a knife on his person,” the officer points out. “Concealed.”

Sam makes up some bullshit about his brother, a weird sense of humor, a Christmas present, and emotional attachment, slips the guy a few twenties, and is out of there like a shot. Jessica seems to want to chat a little more, but he shakes her off and flees.

What’s making his throat and burn and his eyes blur strangely is that his ridiculous story wasn’t really bullshit at all.

\---

It takes Dean six months and several scars out of pure absentmindedness to realize that Sammy isn’t _going_ to call.

\---

Sam doesn’t hear the end of the knife thing for ages. Before long, his geeky image has been entirely superseded by that of a redneck who skins and eats his own squirrel or some such thing. It irritates him, but there’s little he can do but take it with a laugh and hear Dean’s warning words echoing in his head—or did Dean never say them, did he just imagine that?

Jessica offers him welcome respite. She introduces him to Ted, a friend of hers, and the three of them end up spending most of their free time together, Sam returning to his own dorm almost as late as his roommate does each night.

In March, Dean calls.

“Yeah?” says Sam, snapping his cell phone open. He’s walking through the Quad at the moment, the babble of fountains all around, but when he hears Dean’s voice in his ear, he stops dead. “ _Dean?”_ He turns rapidly, looking around for anything near. “Is something wrong?”

There’s a pause, and Sam wonders if the connection’s been lost. “No,” says Dean. “No, I’m just calling.”

“Well — why, then?” Sam’s words are accompanied by that small, incredulous laugh of his. His family doesn’t _just call_.

“I told you, no reason,” Dean says stonily, clearly frustrated.

There’s an awkward silence. “Well —” Sam finally begins, but his throat is dry. He swallows. “Well, what do you want me to say?”

“Nothing,” snaps Dean. “Fuck you.” A click, and he’s gone. Sam draws the phone slowly from his ear.

“Sam?”

He spins. Jess is standing behind him, a stack of books in one arm, her head cocked to the side in concern. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah,” says Sam with an embarrassed shrug, half-laughing duck of the dead. “Yeah. No, everything’s fine.”

“You sure?” Jess shifts her books to the other hip. “You look — shaken. Who was that?”

“My brother,” mumbles Sam, surprised at his own honesty. “But nothing’s wrong at home,” he adds hastily at her expression. “He just wanted to — talk, I guess.”

“You guess?”

Sam shrugs. “He doesn’t want to talk all that often.”

\---

After his botched attempt to talk to Sam — and Dean does not like botching things — he realizes that maybe it’s time to get over it.

It’s a novel concept, just letting his brother go, and he tries not to think about what it might really mean. But it’s time to stop — sulking, or whatever it is he’s been doing, and throw himself back into the work.

After just a few weeks, Dad hands over the Impala to him — "it’s virtually yours, anyway” — points him to a case in Utah, and sets him loose.

\---

To Sam, the full moon has always meant demons and spirits and werewolves and one hellish night. It’s the monthly peak in paranormal activity, the one night each month that they’re guaranteed to get no sleep.

At Stanford, full moons are different. He and Jess are strolling across the Quad alone—Ted’s at a frat party neither of them wanted to attend. It really is beautiful here at night, dark palm trees and moonlight reflected off the water of the fountains. Even so, Sam finds himself walking a little closer to Jess than really should be necessary.

“You know, they say,” she comments, “they say that at least once before you graduate, you should kiss someone on the Quad at full moon.”

“It’s a while before we graduate,” Sam points out.

“True,” says Jess. “But I like head starts. Don’t you?”

She kisses him.

Bizarrely, the first thing in his head is, _What would Dean say if he saw me right now?_ But Dean’s probably fighting for his life somewhere at the moment, and he’s always thought Sam should get more action, anyway.

He wraps his arms around Jessica and kisses her back.

\---

Dean’s first full moon alone is nothing short of terrifying.

Now, anyone who knows half a thing about Dean will tell you he’s not easily terrified. It’s not as if he hasn’t been through a hundred full moons before (he starts to do the math — far more than a hundred — but stops himself for being too much like Sam). This one, though, feels particularly bad, although maybe it’s just that no one’s here to watch his back.

It is pretty astonishing, though, to see how many various and sundry creatures and spirits can be lurking around a place, just waiting for a reason to wake up. Dad explained long ago that it’s only partly the moon and partly them, something about energy traces from so much fighting evil, but after a banshee, two ghouls, a werewolf, and the ghost of a homicidal lunatic, Dean doesn’t feel much like trying to figure that out. He’s exhausted and he’s bleeding and all he wants, as shameful as it is, is someone here to help him out and tell him he’ll be fine or even worry over him so he can tell _them_ he’s fine.

He’s too tired to notice that the blurry someone in his head seems a lot more like Sam than Dad.

\---

The two of them don’t actually realize how serious they are until Sam comments absentmindedly that they should move in together and Jess unthinkingly agrees.

“Hang on,” says Sam a full minute later, when he’s finally realized what they’ve just decided. “We’re serious about this, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” says Jess, with a startled laugh. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

Still, it’s quite a while before Sam starts pondering marriage.

It’s a step his brain doesn’t make at first. With the life he’s lived, a relationship alone is an unthinkable luxury, and marriage utterly impossible. The first time he catches himself looking at rings, he hurries away — what is he doing? — but as time passes, he grows a bit more comfortable with the idea. He’s on his own now, after all. There’s no reason he can’t propose to the woman he loves. There’s no reason he can’t spend the rest of his life with her. A future without hunting. Somehow, the idea’s never occurred to him.

He wonders if Dean would try to shoot him if he asked him to be best man.

\---

Sometimes, Dean just wants to take a gun, drive to Stanford, and—something. Shoot Sam, shoot everyone else, just sit there in the car outside Sam’s dorm and think dire thoughts — he’s not sure which, if any.

He meets up with Dad in Wyoming one time, and Dad mentions that he’s been out to the area, taken a peek around Stanford. Seems like Sam’s doing all right. Got a girlfriend, doing well in classes. Looking at law school, apparently. They’d probably better just leave him alone.

He sounds almost _proud._

Dean doesn’t think he could get anywhere near Stanford and just leave it at that.

\---

He has the dreams for days before she dies, days even before Dean appears uninvited in their apartment one night. In his dreams, he goes away for some reason he doesn’t know, and when he comes home, Jessica is dead. It’s so vivid, every time—the two drops of blood on his head, Jessica on the ceiling, the screaming, running as it all bursts into flames. The same exact way Dad told him his mother died, back before he can remember.

It doesn’t mean anything, of course. He’s just apprehensive about the future, and Jessica is his future, so of course she figures in his dreams. Psychologically, it makes perfect sense.

“I won’t go away,” he murmurs into her hair at night. “I won’t ever go away.”

“Of course you won’t,” she replies sleepily, and he’s safe.

As to why he’s been thinking of Dean so much lately, that he doesn’t try to explain.

\---

When Dad first goes missing, Dean doesn’t sweat it. Dad disappears on some job all the time, and he’s always all right. Still, he drifts back across the country, away from Louisiana and towards California.

Which is, of course, the last place Dad was working and has no significance outside of that.

It just so happens that he’s passing near Stanford, and it just so happens that it occurs to him right then that Sam might want to help out on this, because, you know, it is Dad. So he figures he might as well drop by. Besides, Sammy hasn’t been picking up lately—although there’s no reason Dean’s calling, anyway—and it wouldn’t hurt to make sure he’s all right.

But then, who is he kidding? It’s where he’s been angling all along. To tell the truth, now that Dad might well be gone, he needs this—needs to make sure he can still have Sammy back.

\---

Sam’s forgotten how alive fighting makes him feel, the adrenaline rush when someone jumps him and the fists and feet and flying tackles. Having Dean pinning him down again after all this time of never seeing him, hardly speaking to him, is almost as good as pulling one of Dad’s favorite moves and ending up on top of Dean, his brother’s chuckled concession that maybe he’s not so out of practice, after all.

If he’d remembered this, he might have picked up a couple of Dean’s calls.

Watching Dean flirt with Jess is a little annoying, but still, it’s _Dean;_ he flirts with everything that moves. It’s having to tell Jess to leave that stings, because—well—he _wants_ to, he wants to be alone with his brother, whether it’s private family business or not.

 _I won’t ever go away,_ he promised Jess, but this is only for a few days, and the dream was symbolic, anyhow. It didn’t mean a few days. Besides, this is Dad. It’s important.

The truth is that he’s not doing it for Dad at all. The truth is that he’s doing it because when he pointed out that Dean could too handle this alone, his brother replied, “Yeah, well, I don’t _want_ to.”

\---

It surprises him how easy it is to talk with Sam, fight with Sam, laugh at Sam, flirt with Sam’s girlfriend. If Sam weren’t being weird and anti-family about it, it might seem just like the old times.

It also surprises him how easy it is to get Sam just to say he’ll come.

\---

They make one hell of a team.

Dean is competent, knowledgeable, self-assured — more able to handle himself than before. Sam slips back into the hunting life as if he never left, turns out to be quicker on the uptake even than Dean, even more of a Google whiz than before, maybe a little more reckless, but not to a fault. They click into place. They work _well_. Maybe it’s just that Dad’s not here to pull them apart, but they’re still brothers, even after all of this.

Sitting in the car on the way back to Stanford, both of them are wondering if this can possibly last.

\---

Dean knows there’s something wrong as soon as he turns back to the car. 

\---

When his nightmare comes true, it’s like Sam is dying along with Jess, again and again, every second, as his mind fills with flames and the wide-eyed terror in Jessica’s face.

It’s Dean who pulls him out of the fire, and for a moment Sam hates him for it like he’s never hated anyone, because can’t Dean see how much better it would’ve been to let the fire kill him, too? It’s not that he doesn’t know he would’ve run out anyway. He would have. But Dean could have given him that moment of indecision, that _choice_ , the hesitation where he could’ve shown Jess one last time how much he fucking _cares_.

He can still taste chocolate chip cookie. He wants to vomit.

Inside, he’s breaking apart, shattering into smaller pieces than his physics class taught him were possible, but he doesn’t scream or cry or crumple on the ground. He doesn’t even throw a punch at Dean, and God only knows how good it would feel to crush his brother’s nose beneath his fist, see him bloody and messed up and _in pain_. 

He chokes down bile. It wouldn’t feel good at all.

“We got work to do,” is all he can say.

\---

It’s easier than Dean expected, taking to the road with Sam. They have their share of conflicts, annoyances, tensions, the lot of it. Sam keeps trying to have some sort of heart-to-heart, but it’s easy enough to brush him off. All in all, it works.

After their little Bloody Mary encounter, Dean realizes — really _realizes_ — for the first time that Sam has secrets. That bugs him more than a little, but there isn’t much he can do, although he does hate it for more reasons than he can name when Sam gets to feeling guilty over Jessica. It’s just — Sam’s never been secretive. Sure, he lies when he has to, but Sam is, well, _Sam_ , eternally that chubby twelve-year-old who manages to radiate innocence no matter what happens.

It occurs to him that ten years and a shitload of changes have gone by since that Sam even existed.

He supposes it’s what you call an epiphany, when he offers to let Sam stay with that Christian girl — what’s her name? Lauren or something? — and he says no. There’s something he realizes, certainly, something that hits him like a bolt of lightning, only much more quietly than lightning ever could. Only if this is an epiphany, it’s a pretty crappy one, because he’s not even sure what he’s figured out, let alone what to do with it.

\---

Sam can’t pretend he isn’t enjoying this new — old — life with Dean, trekking across the country, rooting out evil wherever they find it. He’s impatient, yes. He’s angry, yes. But he’s also managed to forget what Dean’s like, his jokes, his mannerisms, all the reasons Sam has never truly wished he didn’t have a big brother.

What he feels the most, though, is guilt.

Dean says he’s being stupid, he couldn’t have helped what happened to Jessica.

He should’ve warned her, Sam objects. What it meant to be connected to the Winchester family.

And she would’ve listened to that? Dean snorts.

Sam knows he’s right, and he can’t explain himself any further, can’t let Dean know what’s going through his head right now, whether he likes it or not. He’d had the dreams, the strange, prophetic dreams. He should have realized it was coming. He shouldn’t have broken his promise, left her alone.

What really scares him as that he thinks he wanted to.

It’s this... thing, with Dean. It’s everything he’s ever admired and never mentioned about him, only more. It’s the way he studies his expressions, memorizes the shape of his nose and the line of his chin, can’t tear his eyes away when Dean’s flirting, moving a little too close to some local beauty in a bar, sliding his hand playfully up her skirt, that charming wink that catches them all.

Sam’s more or less realized by now that he’s no exception.

 _Jess,_ he thinks miserably, trying to ignore his massive hard-on as he watches his brother change clothes out of the corner of his eye. _Please. Jess._

“Bathroom,” he grunts, fleeing. He tries to think of something, anything else as he jerks off hurriedly — Jess, this woman or that from their travels, even the girl Dean picked up last night, she was pretty enough — but all he can see is Dean’s hand on her ass, Dean’s hand, _Dean’s hand_ — Dean’s face and chest and legs and cock. He comes into his hand with a shuddering gasp and hates himself more than ever.

\---

There’s something odd about Sam, Dean decides — odder than usual, that is. He keeps going off by himself, for one — not when it matters, but in between jobs, he’ll sometimes go missing for an entire day. When Dean decides he seriously needs to get laid, Sam practically blows up at him — he doesn’t need Dean’s stupid games, neither of them should be distracting themselves like that, it’s all idiotic and childish.

“Hey, man,” says Dean, holding up his hands up in surrender, “I was just thinking it might make you a bit easier to live with.”

“It wouldn’t,” snaps Sam, so Dean shrugs and heads to the local bar on his own.

There are no women who catch his eye tonight, though, so instead he sits in a corner, nursing his beer and thinking about Sam. Dean has no idea what’s up with him just now, because if he did, whatever it is, he’d be doing something to fix it. The problem is that he’s never had anyone like Jess, not by a long shot. There was Cassie, but even she wasn’t anything like a — a life partner, or something. Then again, he told her about their work. Sam never told Jess. What does that mean?

Fuck, he’s in no state to psychoanalyze this. Not that psychoanalysis ( _six syllables,_ he thinks rebelliously, _count ‘em, college boy_ ) is ever his forte ( _and that’s Italian, thank you very much_ ). The point is, Dean really has no idea what Sam’s going through ‘cause no one’s ever been that close to him. Except Sam himself, of course, but that’s...

Dean suddenly figures out what it was he figured out way back after the whole hook man thing.

He leaves his beer half-finished and goes running out into the night, dashing along the streets and nearly losing his way twice before he arrives at the motel, breathing hard. He wrenches the door open, cursing when his key gets stuck in the lock and tugging it repeatedly until it comes out.

Sam’s on his bed, dozing already. He lifts his head sleepily as Dean closes the door with a bang behind him, then struggles upright, rubbing his eyes, opening his mouth to ask what’s going on.

Dean doesn’t give him the chance. He’s across the room in a few quick strides, grabbing Sammy by the shirt to push him hard against the wall. His brother tries to struggle away, suddenly pale and sweating, but Dean slams a leg between Sam’s to stop him. Then, deliberately, he angles his body forward so that their twin erections are pressed directly against each other through their jeans.

Sam looks terrified, tries again to draw away, lifting his head away so he can’t see Dean’s face. That won’t do.

Releasing his shirt, Dean takes Sam’s face in both hands and pulls their mouths together.

\---

Kissing Dean is nothing like kissing Jess. With Jess, things were slow and sweet and sometimes spicy but they were nothing like this, there was no being pressed bodily against the shabby hotel room wall, lightswitch digging into his back, no clashing teeth from eagerness, no hands clenching in the hair hard enough to hurt.

He misses the slow and the sweet and the spicy, he loved it, but it doesn’t take more than a couple moments to realize that he loves this too, in such a different way but just as much.

When Dean fucks him, Sam gasps and needs and loves and wants. He can feel Dean’s heavy, ragged breathing against the back of his neck, moans a little without meaning to, arches his head back in helpless pleasure.

For a moment, he thinks he sees Jess hovering, insubstantial, in the air before him, wearing that same Smurfs nightshirt Dean commented on the last time Sam saw her alive. He gasps sharply, a fierce stab of guilt piercing his gut, but she only gives him that grin of hers, sweet and wicked at the same time. _Took the two of you long enough,_ she seems to say, and then she’s gone.

Seconds later, Sam’s orgasm hits him, and there’s no guilt in it at all.


End file.
